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Natural Search
When you search on the Internet with a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN you see two types of results: Paid Advertising and Natural Results. Before we dig into how natural search works let’s have a quick discussion about paid advertising.
Paid Advertising – PPC (pay per click)
Every major search engine includes paid advertising these days. This advertising is typically referred to as Pay-Per-Click or PPC. The ads normally appear across the top and down the right of the screen when you perform a search. And in most cases the company running the advertisement pays each time someone clicks on it.
Below is an illustration of Google search results with the Pay Per Click ads highlighted.
Use Pay Per Click with Caution
Pay per click advertising is an effective tool if it drives consumers to a webpage where a sale can result. We typically don’t recommend pay per click advertising in situations where a direct sale cannot result. It can quickly get expensive with no measurable result.
Natural Search Results
Natural search results cost the website owner nothing and are clicked on with much higher frequency than paid ads. This makes natural search results incredibly valuable.
In the early days of search engines (circa 1994) the results were all natural. You would search on a phrase such as “new cars” and the search engine would display a list of web pages that it thought were the most relevant for that phrase.
Natural search still has the same basic goal – display the web pages that are the most relevant as determined by the search engine. Each search engine applies it own set of logic and rules to decide which pages to display.
Below is an illustration of Googl search results with Natural search results highlighted.
So the question that immediately comes to mind is: How do I get my website to show up in natural search results?
Ah, the million dollar question. Getting your website to show up in natural search results and show up on page 1 (the first 10) is the holy grail of Internet Marketing. If you can do it, the result will be more customers than you can imagine.
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